When Only Silence Remains
by perch
Summary: Written for LJ Comm 5 changes: What if Gourry hadn't been able to save Lina at the end of Next? What if Lina came back as something more and less?


Title: When Only Silence Remains  
Author: lj userwhelpling  
Fandom: Slayers  
Claim: Lina Inverse  
Theme Set: A  
Theme (# and description): 2. Serving Two Masters  
Rating and Warnings: PG for language and situations. Disclaimer: I do not own the Slayers, nor am I making any form of profit from this piece of fanfiction.  
Summary and Notes: What if Gourry hadn't saved Lina at the end of Next? What if Lina came back as something more?

* * *

I was but a young girl, working part time in my Father's tavern the night the man in white came.

The man in question entered the tavern in the middle of Father's story time. He was only average height, but covered head to toe in white cloth. At his side was a sword that hung confidently, easily within reach. The only patches of skin visible were his fingers in the cut back gloves he wore and the corners of his eyes, where the mask he didn't quite cover. Of this skin one could only venture that he had some kind of disease, for how else could you explain the pale blue, the rough texture, visible from a good sitting distance, the seeming presence of rock?

Of his mannerisms I can say only that he was blunt, but not to the point of rudeness, that he knew his mind and spoke only sparingly. That he had a confidence unlike any other I had ever seen, and a presence around him that was undeniable.

"Hello traveler, you look wary and tired standing over there," my Father's words came out crisply and clearly, his devoted audience looking from him to the stranger, "Come sit by the fire, relax, eat a bowlof soup, let the dust from the road settle down. What are we doing here? Recounting stories, telling tall tales best left in the past. Hee, don't look so startled stranger, I'm just having a bit of fun."

"Is there any particular story you would like heard told?" My Father asked on this dark night and the stranger answered, "I'd like to hear the story you tell around here, the one about Lina Inverse."

This is the story my Father told.

* * *

It was twenty odd years ago when the world came crashing down around Sairaag. At that time I was an old mercenary looking to end my dealings with the band I was with, settle down, get me a wife, have me some children, a small place, a quiet life.

I heard talk of strange visitors, ghosts from the past raising and walking again in Sairaag and me and the boys decided to go investigate. By the time we arrived whatever ghosts had been walking around that place had been reburied and the sky was inky black, a hole opened up straight to heaven. If you've ever seen a tsunami on land or a twisting funnel of air, it was like that, only darker, colder, and capable of freezing old bones together.

I don't know exactly what had happened, though I'd heard talk of strange going-ons, that monsters were walking the earth in the form of men and the sorceress Lina Inverse was somehow involved. What I saw that night stunned me. A ball of pure golden flame in a vaguely human shape rose into the sky, other shapes followed, seemingly jumping from rock to rock as everything rose, as the very city crumbled and ascended and the sky swirled in an inky black circle.

There were cries and screams and then the golden shape disappeared and what appeared to be another shape followed after, while the whole mess continued to sink into itself. After a time everything stopped falling up, the city settled back into ruins and the blackness that had been crawling along the sky disappeared. The rest of the mercenaries I'd been traveling with had long since scattered to the winds, leaving only me and the straggling survivors from the area. I decided to stay there for a while, helped a young miss named Sylphiel, a beautiful dark haired, softly spoken, young woman of some twenty years, rebuild her city.

It was some six months later when the strange woman appeared. I was working in the fields on the outskirts of town, trying to get in a good crop of corn before it was too late in the season when, I can only call them sparkles, appeared in the air. They rushed around me in circles, blossoming and expanding until finally they formed into a young girl, no more then sixteen or seventeen years old, with long red hair and red and gold clothing on. I managed to catch the girl before she landed on the ground, and her eyes opened, not fluttered, not confused, just opened and she looked at me with the oldest pair of eyes I've ever seen in all my travels.

Hell, I don't know why I touched her, or didn't run screaming into the town. I just did and I stayed there and looked at her for long minutes before asking her what her name was.

She looked at me for a long time, long enough that I wondered if she was going to speak or if she was mute or unable to hear before she said and these words. Words I have never forgotten, in all these years:

"This form was once called Lina Inverse. This is the name I shall go by."

Her words, while odd, shouldn't have given me the creeps like they did. I felt cold inside, colder then I did that earlier day when I watched the sky go crazy, and this girl, this Lina, regarded me curiously, her eyes passive and calm.

I offered to take her into town, to get her food and shelter for the night but she refused me saying only:

"I do not require food or rest, only directions. I am looking to go to Saillune."

I answered her, pointing out directions and following her to the road. I asked her over and over again if she was sure she wanted to leave so soon, if she was really going to leave already, but she just kept walking, disregarding everyone in her path. After a while I let her get ahead of me, continue down the road, and I packed up and left soon after, deciding I'd had enough of towns that bring people out of thin air.

I never saw Lina again.

* * *

"That's my story, young man," my father finished, "not much of one to tell the truth. I've always regretted not following her."

The other men in the room laughed and called fib on the whole tale, but my father swore that it was truth, all of it and the stranger asked, "Tell me, did no one else come out of the nether with her? A tall blonde man, wielding a sword?"

"Funny you should ask me that stranger, Miss Sylphiel asked the same question when I went back to town. No, no one else fell into the field that day, though the girl did carry a sword."

"Can you describe it to me?"

"It was a long sword in a plain scabbard, much too long for her actually, I remember wondering how it was she wasn't tripping over it herself."

"There was nothing else? She never drew the sword or said anything else to you?"

"No, she didn't speak to me again."

"My thanks, for the food and the story," the man in white said and got up to leave.

"Wait," my father cried, and moved over to the man, "why all the interest? Why now?"

"What interest?" the man asked.

"The other day another man came in here and asked for this same story, he also asked about a blonde man and a sword."

"Tell me, was the man around my height, black hair, carried a staff, calling himself a priest?"

"Yes."

"Then I must leave immediately," and with that the man walked out the front door, not stopping to answer any other questions.

Later that night after we had shut the inn down, I asked my father the question that had been burning on my tongue all evening.

"Father, why did you lie and tell them that Lina went to Saillune?"

My father looked at me, long and hard, before answering, "Because that's what Lina asked me to say."

"But father, what if that man was a friend of Miss Lina's?"

"And what if the one before him was too? I'm merely respecting her wishes to be left alone daughter, now go upstairs and take up her supper, I'm sure she's hungry now, what with us having to delay it for that stranger coming by."

I bit back my other questions and gathered up the meal, walking up to the attic where Lina has been staying the past year. She was looking out the window that faces the backyard, her face calm and serene as usual.

"Dinner Miss Lina."

Like every other time she turned and looked at me, smiling gently, before starting her meal.

"There was another man here tonight, asking after you."

"Yes?"

"He was covered all in white and his skin looked like it had a bad disease, it was pale blue and looked like it had hard bumps all over it. He asked about the sword and the blonde man."

Lina put her utensils down and looked at me, "and what did your father tell him?"

"The same thing daddy always says that you came from a cloud of sparkles and then left towards Saillune. Miss Lina, why do you want daddy to tell people that? Why don't you want people to know where you are?"

At first, I thought she wasn't going to say anything, but then she sighed and begin.

"A long time ago I was a young and powerful sorceress. At that time I traveled with a small group of companions. One of my companions was a tall blonde man named Gourry and one day he tried to save my life. We were fighting a monster, in the shape of a small boy, a monster named Hellmaster Phibrizzo, and this monster was killing everything around him.

You see, this monster wanted to destroy the world, but he wanted me to start the act, by employing a powerful spell to summon the Mother of all Chaos, the Lord of Nightmares. Eventually, after Hellmaster took away everyone I cared about, after it looked like the whole world would be lost I cast the spell. I cast it because I couldn't face another day without the man named Gourry. I cast it to save his life. I cast that spell and I died.

I was consumed by the Lord of Nightmares and then I was reborn. She gave me a second chance, and she gave me Gourry's sword. From what I can deduce Gourry came after me. He came to save me and he died. The Lord of Nightmares sent me back to earth as her spy, to watch the doings of man and monster, to be her eyes.

One day, while wandering, I wasn't careful and came too close to the city of Saillune and was spotted. This is why these men are trying to find me. They want to know what happened, to me, to Gourry. They want to know if Gourry is dead and the easiest way to find out is to ask about the sword."

"Why," I asked.

Lina didn't answer me immediately. Instead she took a small pin out and fiddled with the handle of the sword, popping the blade from hilt. She then lifted the hilt and whispered, "Light come forth." A beautiful blade of color formed, all swirled with patterns of gold, black, white, red, blue, and green.

"For generations this sword has been only pure white, but when I received it, it started to form this way. I can only assume that this is from the Lord of Nightmares influence. I have wandered the world of twenty years, watching, observing, and serving my master. I come here, to rest before leaving again. You see, I came back from the dead, but I don't feel like Lina Inverse. I have all her memories, all her knowledge, but I feel hollow inside, like I was only partially returned, like I'm merely a badly formed copy of the original, missing the drive, the feelings, and the motivations that made up the original Lina Inverse. I have the fabled Sword of Light, the power of the god that created all and my own considerable magical abilities and still, it's as if I'm merely an echo in this world, a pale reflection of something long dead."

Lina Inverse left us again that night, taking the sword with her. She never returned and we never heard of any rumors concerning her. The man in white and the other man, the one who called himself a priest never returned. I never spoke to anyone about what was said in that attic until today, not even my father, who after Lina left stopped telling the story.

Why am I telling you this? It's been forty years since that day in the tavern. I'd like to believe that by now everyone that had a part in that story has returned to the land and that Miss Lina has finally been reunited with Gourry. It may just be the foolish dreams of an old woman, but this is my hope.

Now young man, why did you ask after Lina after all this time? Where did you hear your stories?

And the young man stood up slowly and looked down at me before raising one finger to his lips and saying softly, "That, my dear lady, is a secret."


End file.
